NEWARK — Lee Anthony Evans wanted to know why the Newark police detective who had investigated the decades-old disappearance of five boys from the city never followed up on a reported shooting involving the same boys three days before they vanished.

Evans is charged with killing the boys on Aug. 20, 1978, and is representing himself at his murder trial in Superior Court in Newark.

"Isn’t a flag up here? … Why you didn’t go and investigate" that incident? Evans today asked the detective, Rashid Sabur, who is still on the police force.

"I didn’t deem it necessary to do so," Sabur replied without elaborating.

It was Sabur’s interview in February 1999 with Rogers Taylor, the brother of one of the boys, that yielded the information about the shooting incident.

According to Sabur, Taylor said a friend told him someone allegedly fired at Evans while he drove his pickup truck with the five boys in back. That man, Robert Cutler, is now in state prison and is expected to testify tomorrow.

Referring to the shooting, Evans told Sabur, "It was close to a couple days from them being missing. You don’t think that’s important?"

"No," came the answer, prompting Evans to step back from the podium where he stood, then shake his head in frustration.

In his most confrontational cross-examination since the trial began Friday, Evans hammered away at what he believed was Sabur’s flawed and incomplete investigation into the missing boys case. At the time of Sabur’s investigation, Evans had long been a suspect in the disappearance but had not been arrested. In March 2010, he and a cousin, Philander Hampton, were charged with five counts of murder.

Evans is accused of locking the boys in an abandoned house then burning the structure down. The bodies were never found, and an arson investigator who responded that night testified today to the house’s "total destruction. The building collapsed down to the basement," said the retired investigator, John Delk.

No DNA evidence or fingerprints can link Evans to the crime. His arrest came on the strength of Hampton’s confession in November 2008, in which he called Evans the mastermind of the crime. Hampton has accepted a plea deal and will testify against Evans as the prosecution’s final witness.

Essex County prosecutors allege Evans killed the boys as payback for their theft of marijuana from his home.

A dozen relatives of the victims have testified the boys did odd jobs for Evans around the neighborhood — he was a contractor — and he was the last person seen with the boys. They hopped into his pickup and were never heard from again, relatives said.

Prosecutors have acknowledged the case is not an easy one, and while Evans has fumbled through much of his cross examinations, he has also raised questions about other potential suspects.

When he cross-examined Floria Turner McDowell, who is Melvin Pittman’s mother, she said a man with a gun knocked on her door the day of the disappearance. The man was not Lee Evans, she said. His identity is unclear.